July 24, 2012
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(written on 11 March 2013)
Unfortunately Colin also had to work today, so he couldn’t join us for part of the day while Andy, Stacey, Michael and Andy’s former colleague Hugh and I went on a cocktail adventure in Glasgow city centre. Before meeting up with everyone, Andy and I walked into town and we wanted to visit the Tennement House, a museum that shows a typical Glaswegian tenement as it was at the turn of the 20th Century, when Glasgow was going through a major transformation to become the British Empire’s second city after London. I’ve been wanting to visit the Tenement House for ages but in my nearly eleven years of visits to this city never managed to do so… and today luck was also not on our side when a sign outside the museum told us it would only open at 1pm. Ah well. We went to the Museum of Modern Art instead which always has something interesting to say (although I can’t say I was mightily impressed with the video installation in its ground floor exhibition space).
We met up with everyone else in the early afternoon and went to our first destination; Rogano’s, just between Buchanan Street and Royal Exchange Square. We all ordered our cocktails (each one different, with mine being a mojito) at the bar and waited for a booth to become available for lunch – which happened soon enough. Delicious food and a second cocktail (mine based on Blue Curacao) followed soon enough and we were having a great time. Some of our group wanted to try another venue so after paying we walked across the road to TGI Friday’s, where the above picture was taken (from left to right it’s Hugh, Michael, Stacey and Andy.) All I can say about TGI’s is that their cocktails are enormous. Not necessarily special, but enormous for sure. So much so that I felt I needed to calm down a bit to survive the day (it was only mid afternoon), so I ordered a non-alcoholic cocktail, the news of which was met by some as if I had uttered some obscene profanities. None the less, I was happy with that decision because it saved my day!
Our next stop was the Revolution bar where some more cocktails and shots followed, some of them extremely fruity. That’s where Colin also joined us as he got into the city center from work. In the early evening we marched south again to the next bar, namely the corner bar of the Radisson SAS hotel on Hope and Oswald Streets. Probably not the best bar of the day (that accolade would go to Rogano’s) and we didn’t stay there for too long. It was also a glimpse of the Olympics that will start in London on Friday because some Olympic football games will be played here in Glasgow. They kicked off already (and there was already an embarrassing faux-pas as the South Korean anthem was played for the North Korean team) and some players walked past the bar where we having some more cocktails. The last venue of the evening was the Champagne Bar in Central Station itself where we had the last drink of the day, before waving everyone off on the train. We headed back to the West End after what was a lovely day, filled to capacity with delicious cocktails.
